ABSTRACT
What happens when governments that have benefited from ‘solidarity’ programs to redistribute money from richer to poorer states are faced with the prospect of being redefined as a ‘richer state’ themselves? After communism, such a situation has confronted the traditionally poorer states of Western Germany and the traditionally poorer nations of the European Union. Yet funding was far more generous in the East German case than in the Central and Eastern European case. Why? The strong institutional positions of the traditionally poorer states meant, in both cases, that the key factors shaping the outcomes were the electoral exposure of the respective central governments and the presence or absence of hard budget constraints on that political centre. High exposure and low constraint marked the German case while low exposure and high constraint characterized the EU case.
